NEW YORK — The 2026 TCS New York City Marathon, run on Sunday, November 1, produced a winner who had never raced the distance before, a women's finish settled in the last few strides, and a home podium the United States had been waiting eight years for. Sweden's Andreas Almgren, 31, won the men's open division in 2 hours, 6 minutes and 1 second in his marathon debut, according to New York Road Runners (NYRR), the race organiser. Kenya's Sheila Chepkirui, 35, won the women's race in 2:24:36 — her second New York title, after 2024 — and the Swiss pair Marcel Hug and Catherine Debrunner swept the wheelchair divisions. Nearly 60,000 athletes took part, NYRR said.
Source: New York Road Runners
The men's race: a debutant runs away after 35K
The lead men's group held together for 35 kilometres before Almgren broke away, covering the final 7.2 kilometres — through Harlem, up Fifth Avenue and into Central Park — in 20 minutes and 27 seconds, Marathon Handbook's race report said. Italy's Yemaneberhan Crippa finished second in 2:06:14, 13 seconds behind, and Lesotho's Kamohelo Mofolo was third in 2:06:26 on the day he turned 21, becoming the first athlete from his country to reach the New York podium, ahead of Kenya's defending champion Benson Kipruto. Almgren is the first Swede to win any division at this marathon, the first man to win the open title on debut since Gebre Gebremariam in 2010, and his time was the third fastest in the course's history — with the top seven finishers all recording times among the ten fastest ever run on the course, the Associated Press reported. He finished just four seconds outside the Swedish record.
Almgren arrived with a sprinter's and middle-distance runner's past and an injury file that would have ended many careers: a navicular stress fracture wrecked his 2016 Olympic summer, a torn meniscus the 2021 one, and in 2024 he withdrew a day before the Paris Olympic 5,000m heats with a stress reaction in his tibia, NBC Sports reported. In 2025 he became the first Swedish man to win a World Championships track medal, taking bronze in the 10,000m, and on September 20 this year he won the World Half Marathon Championships in Copenhagen. A year ago he had stood in Brooklyn and on First Avenue as a spectator at this race and texted his manager that he wanted to run New York in 2026. Draped in a Swedish flag on Sunday, he told the broadcast: "This marathon thing, it's quite fun."
The women's race: six seconds, then 0.41
Chepkirui pulled away from her countrywoman Hellen Obiri — a two-time New York champion and last year's winner — in the final 150 metres to win in 2:24:36. Behind her came the finish of the day. American Jess McClain surged past Obiri in the final strides to take second in 2:24:42, six seconds behind Chepkirui and just 0.41 seconds ahead of Obiri's 2:24:43, NBC Sports reported. It is the first podium finish by an American, male or female, at the New York City Marathon since Shalane Flanagan finished third in her title defence in 2018. McClain, a Scottsdale, Arizona resident who was fourth at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials, had raced only once between February 2020 and February 2022 while building a marketing career, then ran her first marathon to celebrate turning 30 — winning the 2022 Mesa Marathon in 2:33:35. Kenya's Edna Kiplagat, the 2010 champion, finished fourth at the age of 46.
The top American man was Zouhair Talbi, sixth in 2:06:43 — a time faster than the American course record, though Talbi, who raced the Paris Olympic marathon for Morocco, gained U.S. citizenship after joining the U.S. Army Reserve in 2025 and his switch of sporting nationality takes effect in August 2027, in time for the 2028 Olympic Trials, NBC Sports reported. American record holder Conner Mantz, in his first marathon since lowering the national record to 2:04:43 in Chicago in October 2025, finished 11th in 2:07:27 after a year disrupted by injuries including a sacral stress fracture. "My legs just weren't there today," he said afterwards.
Wheelchair races: a Swiss sweep, and a one-second finish
Marcel Hug of Switzerland won the men's wheelchair race in 1:28:14, his record-extending eighth New York title, beating American Daniel Romanchuk — a three-time champion here — by a single second, NYRR said. His countrywoman Catherine Debrunner, arriving off a world record set last month, won the women's wheelchair race in 1:40:02, nearly eight and a half minutes ahead of five-time champion Tatyana McFadden of the United States. American Susannah Scaroni, the winner in 2022, 2024 and 2025, was third in her first race since the birth of her son Jonah on August 6.
Background: 50 years of five boroughs
Sunday's race was the 55th edition of the marathon and marked the 50th anniversary of the five-borough course, first run in 1976 to celebrate the United States Bicentennial — a course that starts on Staten Island, crosses five bridges and finishes in Central Park, and is known as the slowest of the major American marathons because of its hills and turns. The field of nearly 60,000, almost half of them women, is a long way from the 127 entrants of the first edition in 1970. One runner tied the whole history together: Dave Obelkevich ran his 50th consecutive New York marathon on Sunday and remains the only person to have run every edition of the five-borough course. The elite fields were missing two names — Olympic champion Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands withdrew three weeks before the race through sickness, and 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials champion Fiona O'Keeffe after left hamstring surgery, NBC Sports reported. Conditions on the day were sunny and warm.
What happens next
New York was the last World Marathon Major of 2026, though the Valencia Marathon in Spain on December 6 traditionally produces fast times. For the Americans, Sunday reshaped the road to the March 2028 Olympic marathon trials in St. Louis: McClain, who will be 36 by then, is now a leading contender to make her first Olympic team, and Talbi's nationality switch takes effect in August 2027, making him eligible for those trials. And somewhere in Sweden, a data-science graduate who had never run 26.2 miles before Sunday morning now holds one of the sport's biggest titles — and the third-fastest time ever run on this course.